On a Great Day
by camihere
Summary: ONE-SHOT. Let me tell you about a great day. On a great day, you wore heels for the first time since the accident. Your wife seemed nervous about it, but then she saw you—with nothing but the heels and underwear and a shirt—and she gifted you with the biggest smile that made your heart dance and tickle at the same time. (Based on episode 09x18)


It hurt a lot before.

The reddened swollen stump of meat that supported the large pieces of titanium and plastic and whatnot. The thing held you up the whole day, and on the good days the pain you felt came from the ugly stump—the socket got scratchy and the prosthetic put pressure on your muscles and you'd think you were easy to carry around all day, but turns out you are heavier than you'd imagined. On the good days, only by the end of the day you want to break down from pain, and when you get home to your family, completely exhausted, you have to fake not feeling like you were tortured all day. You go hold your daughter, sometimes bathe her, sometimes cook dinner, but the worst was doing the dishes. The sink is a little lower than it should be, so you have to bend your back, and it hurts so bad you actually had to pretend to be too lazy to do them once. Callie was shocked, but didn't say anything. You never tried to get out of house service before.

On the good days, you'd wait until your hot wife showered before you, despite her invitation to accompany her, and then you'd soak in a hot bath, trying desperately to wash the pain away, but the hot water does nothing but redden your skin even more and dry your skin later. You were never a fan of overly warm water.

"Wanna join me?" She says with that devilish happy grin on her big mouth and you fall in love all over again, but that scares you and you back out.

"I think I'm gonna go check on Sofia. I thought I heard her crying a second ago."

"Oh… Ok." She tries to hide her disappointment as hard as you try to come up with your excuses, and at least you make that effort for each other, but its still awkward.

On good days, by the time you came back from your bath your wife's already asleep, so she doesn't have to deal with yet another disappointment including one half naked woman. She sleeps with only a camisole and underwear—maybe hoping it'd give you an extra push?—and you can't help but soak the view in before sleeping. You want to touch it so bad, but you're afraid if you do she'll wake up and then you'd have to say something; do something.

On good days, you only wake up once in the middle of the night with your leg throbbing. You think of the waves and try to go back to sleep, and only two hours later you're up and ready for work. You're renewed, despite everything, and your leg doesn't hurt and you put on your prosthetic and it feels so easy you can't help but think that maybe—just maybe—its starting to get better. You're getting used to it. It'll hurt less and less gradually.

"Good morning, beautiful," you say, happily, and your wife is surprised and happy and melts at the kiss you give her. You feel guilty that she's so needy she actually held on to that good morning kiss with such fervor. "Someone's in a good mood," she says, humming, while you kiss Sofia. She giggles when you make faces—she could always sense your moods.

"Well, I feel good," you say. "Maybe I can make you feel the same later."

You wink, she smiles that wide smile of hers.

On good days, that promise of intimacy is forgotten or pushed aside by your pain, but on bad days it turns into annoyance and even full blown arguments with your wife.

On bad days, your leg actually hurts. It's not even there anymore, but the pain is inclement and ravishing and sometimes you can't even breathe because you know it's all in your mind and you try to control your brain—you try to make it see, make it feel, that it's gone and can't be recovered, no matter how much it hurts. The pain is incoherent, but your brain refuses to concede. So it goes on with its dogged throbbing, wave after wave of piercing pain like a knife on fire inside your non-existent leg.

On bad days, Callie knows you're in pain. She gets fidgety around you, asking you to come sit down with her as an excuse—anything to make you rest, really—but you never accept her requests because it's so humiliating.

You married a gorgeous woman, you see. She's got the biggest heart you've ever seen and she never fails to surprise you, whether with mundane additions to your daily routine like sexy lingerie or life changing decisions like buying a hospital. She's unpredictable and exciting and everything a girl like you wants—and you know there are plenty of girls like you out there; you've met quite a few back in the day. They'd all be crazy about her. They'd all have two legs and would be eager to spread them for a girl like Callie. So it's scary to think that she'd see you as anything else other than her wife; her partner. You might be a celibate wife, but you're still her wife. You kiss her and hug her and tell her you love her—you just don't make love to her because it's scary.

So these are your bad days and these are your good days.

Now let me tell you about a great day.

On a great day, you wore heels for the first time since the accident. Your wife seemed nervous about it, but then she saw you—with nothing but the heels and underwear and a shirt—and she gifted you with the biggest smile that made your heart dance and tickle at the same time.

On a great day, she showed you off at work, joyous about how maybe your life could go back to normal. She even offers your butt to display, urging everyone else to be as happy as she was, because that's how she is—she just can't be happy by herself, she has to drag everyone else with her.

On a great day, you felt sexy to be back on the heights and just wanted to make your wife feel as good as you did. You looked at her bored face from the slow day at work and you coyly mentioned that that night was the night. She jumped from her chair immediately, surprised and excited, but also cautious, and she made sure you were both on the same page. She acted like a dork, so you felt even more confident—you never fully understood how that gorgeous sexy woman could act so nervous and unsure around you, but it heightened your spirits. A colleague interrupted your chat—it was one of Callie's best friends, but she didn't give her a second of her time because you looked at her in that provocative way, nonchalant, knowing where it was going to end. It ended how you expected; with Callie going into one of her filter-less rambles, only this time purposely, and you found it very amusing. You couldn't wait for that night.

On that very same great day, she goes into another filter-less ramble, but this time it's serious and hurtful. She finds you in pain—of course you were in pain; heels were already painful enough without a plastic leg—and she asks to take a look at the stump and your answer comes in rocket speed. Nope, you say. You're not my doctor, you're my wife. That line—the same one that's been running through your head ever since the accident, whenever Callie tries to help you—comes out of your mouth and is enough to make her snap. We're not gonna have sex tonight, she says, that's what you're saying. You just told me your leg hurts, and tonight when I put on my drop-dead gorgeous underwear you're gonna tell me to change into my sweats. And when I look disappointed you're gonna say "please don't make that face, Callie, you know my leg's been bothering me today".

On a great day, Callie comes clean to you. She's been patient—extremely patient, considering what a sex crazed woman she usually is. Just like that, a great day becomes a good day. You are hurting, Callie is disappointed—in your book, that's a good day. You're not nearly crying from pain and you go on with your day.

But then a great day becomes a bad day. If you thought you knew the pain from a prosthetic leg before, that was because you didn't know the pain from a prosthetic heeled leg. You hide with the x-rays, pretending to be working, but tears spring to your eyes and you're glad you're alone—until you aren't.

Callie comes in, and just like that the bad day becomes a good day again. She knows you're in pain, but this time it's different. You're tired of pretending you're not, so you just admit—not with so many words, but you know she gets it. "Let me help," she says, and you're about to say no when she interrupts you again. "I am an orthopedic surgeon. Let me try." She's also tired of you pretending not to be in as much pain as you are. Then you realize you're tired of pushing her away, so you let her help. You don't want to do it because you think that it would take away your wife and replace it with a doctor instead, but the pain is so unbearable that at that point you would accept anything. So you take off your pants—and a miracle happens.

Sitting there on that spinning office chair, feeling more exposed than you had ever felt before, you trust her and let her do her thing—and the outcome surprises you immensely. She makes you feel insecure at first, naked before her like you'd never been before, and she touches your leg in a way that makes you son. She looks at you with this new feeling in her eyes—something she had been hiding deep inside for a while, trying to respect you—and you realize that it's understanding.

You find her miraculous, you said to Lexie Grey once. Breathtakingly stunning. You can't stop looking at her. You said that to Lexie Grey so many years ago, in a time when Lexie Grey still existed and breathed the same air as you. It was during the early stages of your relationship with Callie and you thought that the feeling would go away. It did sometimes, eventually, but at that moment you couldn't help but stare dumbstruck at her.

She was miraculous back then, and now she is miraculous all over again.

On a great day, Callie manages to make you stop hurting—and all she had to do was put her miraculous hands on your leg. All the pain just suddenly subsided, like it never even existed, and you can't help but stare in wonder at the miraculous woman before you, massaging your legs with so much care and affection—and you can't help but thank her.

She shushes you, saying that right now she's Doctor Torres, but you know that the way she massages your leg isn't at all like she does with her patients. You two share an accomplice look and you fall in love all over again—harder than ever.

On a great day, you realize that letting Callie take your pain away doesn't make you her patient at all. It was what she signed up for, after all—taking your pain away when you couldn't; being your rock when needed. It is nothing that you haven't done for her before, even if she's never lost a limb.

On a great day, you wait for her in bed wearing nothing but a sexy red camisole.

On a great day, you reunite physically in an intensity that surpasses anything you'd ever experienced before.

On a great day, you reconnect with the person you chose to be your soulmate and you start this new meaningful connection that is completely different from anything else. It's a new found trust you thought you could never feel with anyone in your entire life—that you thought no one could ever feel, ever. You love her. She loves you. That is simple. What was complicated and would never fail to surprise you was the ways in which a relationship could grow to become something more beautiful each day, even when you think it couldn't be any better.

That all happened in a great day.

Actually, scratch that.

That all happened in a perfect day. The great days were just the days after that one—and they went on for the rest of your life.


End file.
